Did you know May 30 – July 4 is the first-ever Northfield History Month? Learn more about the events here.

Every weekday this Northfield History Month, come on over to the Northfield History Collaborative to learn a little more about one of the newest additions to our online collection of materials that help tell Northfield’s history.

• Day 1: 259 photographs of World War II era servicemen and women

One of the Collaborative’s partner organizations, the Northfield Arts Guild, has a goal of digitizing all of its theater programs going back to 1959. They are now 22 programs closer to that goal! The bulk of the guild’s collection from 1959 to 1984 is now available online in its section of the Collaborative.

The new programs range from 1981 to 1984 and include the following:

• As You Like It
• Bye, Bye,  Birdie!
• Custer
• Famous Fables From Far Away
• Ghosts
• Hans Christian Andersen
• Heidi
• Here’s Love!
• Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit
• On Golden Pond
• Peter Pan
• Scrooge
• Snoopy
• Tennessee Williams’ Women
• The Crucible
• The Four of Us – A Musical Revue
• The Odd Couple
• The Passion of Dracula
• The Pied Piper and Androcles the Lion
• The Song of Norway
• Toad of Toad Hall
• Winnie-the-Pooh

Did you know May 30 – July 4 is the first-ever Northfield History Month? Learn more about the events here.

Every weekday this Northfield History Month, come on over to the Northfield History Collaborative to learn a little more about one of the newest additions to our online collection of materials that help tell Northfield’s history.

First up, we’re highlighting 259 photographs of Northfield-area veterans, most from World War II. This collection came to the Northfield Historical Society from the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post.

If you don’t read any further, please do stop and take a look at these three photographs. They came to us unidentified, and we’d love to know who they are.

Otherwise, I’ll point out for you a few of the photos that really struck me.

• This young man in the first photo, Curtis Samuels, is standing right on Bridge Square. That made quite an impact on me, as someone born several decades after World War II.
• This photo of LeRoy Pflaum is also touching, as just a young man joking around.
• Then there was this photo of Kenneth Tuma, wearing a whole lot of fire-power.
• Something that surprised me: One group of Northfield boys brought a live mascot, Dalmatian Jiggs Kump, when they went off to Camp Claibourne, Louisiana. Several tales about Jiggs and his grand adventure turn up in the scrapbooks of wartime columnist Nellie “Mom” Phillips.

Take a look through these! We didn’t acquire a whole lot of information about these servicemen and women — and no doubt some of the names are misspelled — so please comment or send us anything we should know.

Maggie Lee dries a collection of campaign buttons after a fire at the Northfield News in 1964.

“What is Maggie doing?” I asked myself when I first saw this image a year or two ago in the back room of the Northfield News. Yesterday I finally got my answer.

I did know that it was taken just after a fire had badly damaged the Northfield News and Independent offices on November 19, 1964. At that time, they were located in the 300 block of Division Street, where Division Street Dance and Jenkins Jewelers are now.

As I was flipping through the News issues of that time to learn more about the fire for this blog post, I found this same photo in the paper alongside Maggie’s regular column, “For Women Only.”

What was Maggie doing at 12:30 a.m. after the Big Fire? Polishing buttons.

You may remember that during the final weeks of the election campaign, we had a colorful collection of buttons of campaigns past in one of The News windows. It started with a little boxful of buttons that Carl had saved through the years and was augmented by interesting ones from three or four other Northfielders …

Well, when our “holocaust” was over, the office furniture had been moved to 321 Division, I had returned from a special dinner that I “covered” and had spent three hours wringing water out of various and sundry items, I suddenly remembered those intriguing buttons.

“Oh, they’ll just be all rusty,” said Carl. “Not if I dry them,” I retorted. He found them frozen to placard and window floor, pulled them loose and I was busy polishing as Rollie Finner, Carleton College staff photographer dropped in!

All this is to say that the Northfield History Collaborative has now added 70 negatives from the Northfield News fire of 1964. Even if fire fighters, fire, smoke, or the Northfield News don’t interest you, there are some great shots of downtown and half the town watching the event!

 

.. the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages has already rendered our large cities incapable of wise and self government; has burdened the whole land with enormous taxation for the criminals it has made and the pauperism it has caused and by the desolation it has wrought in the homes of the nation and the degradation of its citizens and voters …

Use and abuse of alcohol was of concern to Northfielders since the town’s inception in the 1850s. It was a topic of debates in the Lyceum Society, and their newsletter articles, too.

Temperance and prohibition have also been the goals of Northfield civic organizations. Among them are the Prohibition Club, which established this constitution in 1877, and the Northfield Prohibition League, formed in 1889. A minutes book, constitutions, and other assorted papers from these groups are now available through the Northfield History Collaborative. The originals reside at the Northfield Historical Society.

The minutes are fairly dry, to be honest – no pun intended. It seems that members would be stirred and active following a rousing speaker, then at other times they’d have trouble convincing anyone to be president. But isn’t that how organizations sometimes go today, too?

Researchers of specific individuals will find a list of 45 league members, 149 signatories of the Million Voters’ Agreement, and 42 who pledged financial support to a prohibition circular.

Interior of Holy Cross Church chapel in Dundas, decorated for Christmas, about 1890.

The Northfield History Collaborative invites you to take a look at our community’s past – at this time of year, particularly through some yuletide items.

• This postcard from First National Bank advises customers of 1909 that “the wisest Christmas gift you can make a youngster is to open an account for him.”
• Lucky Northfield invitees celebrated Christmas Eve 1880 at a ball held in the Lockwood Opera House. The ball, held by the Acme Hose Co., featured firemen in full uniform and cost $1 per ticket. Supper was extra at the Archer House. “Yourself and ladies respectfully invited.”
• Student newspaper writer Virginia Givens opined in a 1936 Christmas Periscope that “on the whole, fathers get the best time out of Christmas. Father does not need to obtain any Christmas presents for the children because that is his wife’s job … The one present he might have to purchase — Mother’s — he usually tells his secretary to get for him.”
• “‘What a wonderful Christmas we had,’ Alice’s mother told the workers of the Northfield Welfare board who were responsible for the basket and all the good things it contained.” Read more about this Great Depression-era story here.
• Soldier Walter Hughes wrote home to his parents in Northfield during World War II that great gifts for those serving overseas included shaving cream, razor blades, heavy cotton sweat socks, rounds of 50 cigarettes, a skating cap for under helmets, and candy bars and cookies if sealed into a tin can with scotch tape.

Finally — though you can see more Christmas at the Collaborative here! — is a solemn poem printed in the Northfield News on Christmas Eve 1942: “To The Fighting Men on Christmas Day” by St. Olaf professor George Weida Spohn.

You will not hear the bells on Christmas day,

Or see the glitter of the lighted trees,

Or join the loved ones in your families

In song and prayer, in festive cheer and play.

You only hear what thundering guns may say

And see their muzzles flash on lands and seas,

See blood and hear the shrieks of enemies,

The sights and sounds which mark this global fray.

Beyond this fury lies a patch of earth,

Your home of yesterday, but fresh and clear

As of to-day. From it will drift to you

Sweet memories, almost as old as birth,

An unheard Voice which bids you have no fear,

An unseen Face which dooms the dismal view.

Carleton students who left school for military service during the Spanish-American War, in training with the 12th Minnesota Infantry at Chickamauga. Ernest Lundeen, center, also served with Northfield’s Company K. See the original at http://contentdm.carleton.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CCAP/id/1187.

On this Veterans Day, remember the service of Northfield-area men and women by looking through the documents and photographs at the Northfield History Collaborative that tell their stories.

Browse or search through to see some of our partners’ items from the Civil War, World War I, and other conflicts. Below, I’ll highlight some new items from the Spanish-American War and World War II.

SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

It’s been 115 years since the beginning of one of America’s lesser-known conflicts: The Spanish-American War.

Personally, I could remember from high school history that there was something about Cuba, something about the Philippines, and something about Teddy Roosevelt. If you want a quick primer, Wikipedia offers a good overview here. Their first sentences put the whole thing in a quick nutshell:

The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, the result of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. American attacks on Spain’s Pacific possessions led to involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately to the Philippine–American War.

In this post you’ll see this fantastic photo from the Carleton College collection of five young men associated with the school: John Gleed Redding (1901), Frank Knapp, Ernest C. A. Lundeen (1901 – a member of Company K), Fred Charles Smith (1899), and George G. Larson (1901).

Northfield’s young men were eager to play their part in history back in 1898. As this roster, now online at the Northfield History Collaborative, shows, 90 men from the area volunteered when a National Guard unit was assembled: Company K, 4th Minnesota Infantry. A fun sidenote about this piece: It came to the Northfield Historical society framed. When staff went to unframe it for scanning this summer, there were two more pages inside! You’ll see them at the link as well.

A related item is also new to the Collaborative: An attendance roll book for Company K. It recently came to the Northfield Historical Society from the City of Northfield. It includes some details about promotions, discharges, and so forth.

From what I can tell, Company K itself never went overseas, though the attendance roll book does note the death of one man – a J. F. Severson.  He is not on the original roster noted here, and I’m afraid I don’t have any information about him.

A note at the bottom of the roster does mention the death of another man. Clarence Whitford was a tall 18-year-old, a student from New  London, Wis, according to the roster. From Company K, he enlisted in the 34th U. S. Infantry. The Northfield News of April 20, 1901 reports how he died in the Philippines of typhoid fever early in 1900. A funeral was held for him at All Saints Episcopal Church in 1901; he was  interred at Oaklawn Cemetery.

WORLD WAR II

Here’s a transition for you: That news article above says Clarence Whitford was the nephew of R. C. Phillips of Northfield. To my knowledge, R. C. Phillips was the father of  Nellie Phillips, also known as “Mom Phillips.” She wrote a Northfield News column during World War II to servicemen. So Clarence Whitford and Nellie Phillips were cousins.

The Northfield Historical Society holds about 25 scrapbooks full of Mom Phillips’ columns to servicemen, clippings about their letters home, and a few original photographs and documents. The Collaborative recently posted the first three scrapbooks online: 1, 2 and 3. These are a great way to understand more about what life was like for Northfielders on the homefront, eager for news from the local boys abroad. We plan to add more of the scrapbooks early next year, so be on the lookout for those.

Another collection to watch for: photographs of Northfield’s World War II servicemen and women from the local VFW post.

Barn constructed in 1906 near the current site of the Dittmann Center. The college farm is one of the topics discussed in the American Environmental History course papers now available in the Northfield Student Research Collection. Image courtesy of St. Olaf College Archives collection via the Northfield History Collaborative.

Once a month for the coming year, the Collaborative will host a guest blog from one of our board members. Today’s post comes from Kris MacPherson, Reference & Instruction Librarian and Professor of Asian Studies at St. Olaf College.

Who made up HATPIN and what wonderful locale are they credited with saving?

Which European explorers found huge stands of elm, sugar maple, and basswood trees and how is it that we can still enjoy them today in a selected location?

The answers to these and other questions can be found in one of the important sections of the Northfield History Collaborative collections, the Northfield Student Research Collection.  Many papers get written about Northfield – by sixth graders, by college students, and more – that add wonderful material to the formal histories that have been published.  We have just added contributions from St. Olaf’s American Environmental History course, taught last spring by Professor Megan Raby.  Detailed studies of the history of Sibley Marsh and HATPIN, Nerstrand Big Woods, Native Americans and the Cannon River, and the St. Olaf natural lands/agricultural lands/prairie, among others, are included.  Browse through the research from this class here.  Happy exploring!

I love genealogy, so it’s no big surprise that one of the first projects I crossed off the list in our new Northfield History Collaborative grant was uploading Bridgewater Township’s birth and death records.

There are two books to see: Book L covers 1871 to 1899, and Book M covers 1899 to 1907. Both books are fully transcribed, meaning they are searchable, and you can copy and paste the typed text. The books were always available to the public on request from Bridgewater Township (and more recently the Rice County Historical Society), but now you can view (and search!) them from anywhere on the planet whenever you like.

These particular books are of note for genealogists and local historians because they are the two earliest books of vital records kept by that jurisdiction (to my knowledge). At this time, a birth or a death probably wasn’t registered at the county or state level – the township may have been the only place to record it, if it was reported to any jurisdiction at all.

Things that I noticed:

• Ages: When I think of pioneer women, I tend to think of them getting married around 17, and then popping out babies ’til they’re 30 or 35 — which these records often do reflect. But there are also cases of women having babies – sometimes first babies – in their late 30s and into their 40s.
• Infant mortality: So many of the deaths listed here are children, and I’d say most are under 1 year old. Very sad to read through.
• Causes of death: Of the adults, a significant number of the deaths are due to tuberculosis (called consumption then), especially early on. Diptheria makes a regular appearance, and you’ll also see typhoid, meningitis, and a couple cases of cholera. “Old age” is listed as cause of death in people from their early seventies into the nineties. And then there are a few things that make me scratch my head: Congestion of brain, lung fever, brain fever, throat disease. On the whole, people seemed to me to die significantly younger than they do now, and of things that aren’t fatal now.
• Immigrants: The early records show that a lot of the settlers in their childbearing years were from Canada. This surprised me at first. But, when you think about it, some of the Dundas-area milling folks, like the Archibalds, came from Canada — and the original “Dundas” is in Ontario, too. There were plenty of German immigrants in the records. I didn’t see as many Norwegian or Swedish immigrants listed as I expected, but I wonder if they simply weren’t as faithful about reporting births and deaths to the township.

A few tips for researchers:

• The first part of the book is births; the second part (but more than halfway in) is deaths.
• A complete birth or death entry occurs first on a left-hand page, then continues onto the next right-hand page. You’ll find the combined transcriptions for the spread attached to both the left- and right-hand pages.
• Births and deaths are not listed in the order they occurred. All of the births or deaths for a particular year are listed together (with one or two exceptions), but they appear to be listed by either the date the event was reported or the date that the recorder had time to record it!
• In many cases, the name for a child is not listed for a birth. Try looking for a parent’s name.
• Keep in mind that parents sometimes reused a name if a baby died.
• In the case of twins: the two babies’ births are not always listed in order! Also, the fact that two babies are twins might not be noted. Or, in one case, only one line occurs in the book to report a set of twins, rather than two separate entries.

Again, I’d like to commend Bridgewater Township for taking an active and proactive role in preserving the life of their records. Read more about their other six books in the Northfield History Collaborative here.

On a related note, the History Collaborative will also be adding some early birth and death records from the city of Northfield sometime between now and June 2014. Stay tuned!

I won’t re-tell the whole story because you can already get it at the Faribault Daily News and KYMN Radio.

But here it is in brief: The newest member of the Northfield History Collaborative is Bridgewater Township, an area of Rice County that’s immediately west of Northfield and Dundas. The township has begun its online collection with a bang: six record books spanning 1858 to 1889, fully transcribed, totaling nearly 900 pages.

The six books are:

• Bridgewater Township Town Record, 1858-1863, and Chattel Mortgage Book No. 1, 1860-1864
• Bridgewater Township Town Record, 1863-1867, and Chattel Mortgage Book No. 2, 1868-1882
• Bridgewater Township Town Meetings, April 2, 1867 to March 5, 1889
• Bridgewater Township Road Book, 1858-1871
• Bridgewater Township Road Accounts, 1871-1878
• Bridgewater Township Road Book, 1870-1877

Bridgewater Township has been pro-active about preserving its oldest records. The books now reside at the Rice County Historical Society, where they will be secure, centrally located, and in a stable climate. Thousands of pages were scanned — this makes the content easier to access, and means fewer times the originals need to be handled.

The big story here is how a group of volunteers helped out. The volunteers, mainly members of the Rice County Genealogical Society, have spent years carefully typing up each page of the first six books, then double-checking their work. The result is the collection posted above, full-text searchable.

Take some time to browse through this project and appreciate the hard work of these volunteers.

Stay tuned later this fall for birth and death records from Bridgewater Township from the 1870s to 1910s.